Port Potager

According to the U. S. Drought Monitor, our corner of Massachusetts is officially in a severe drought .  This is a classic application of Murphy’s Law, since we actually planted grass in the front yard this spring. Those efforts were doing reasonably well a few months ago, but we haven’t had a good rain in what feel like forever, and now things look like this: In case you were wondering about our garden irrigation habits, I aim to make sure that the productive food areas get an inch of rain per week, while ornamentals, herbs, and the grapes get a half inch. I keep an eye on the rain gauge and make up the difference with water from the rain barrels or the hose.  Things are so dire right now, though, that I will have to start watering the flowers more regularly as well. To wit, the hydrangea I planted last summer: And that’s in a shady  spot. Did I mention that we are also on something like Day 5 or 6 or a heat wave? (Well, Boston is. Newburyport gets th...

Yesterday I wrote about the half of the perennial border that runs along the driveway . Today we'll walk around the corner to see the rest of it along the path that leads across the yard to the front door. Around the corner from the climbing roses, Siberian irises, and sedum ground cover is some white salvia. Behind the salvia is some red bee balm, which is just starting to bloom. The bees love  this section of the flower garden! There's also a male holly busy and another smallish peony (I really like the way these look even when the bloom is over, so I have a lot of them). Across the front is a wide swath of hardy mums that will bloom in the fall. Like I said, there are a lot of chrysanthemums here. Behind the mums are white lilies, Shasta daisies, and the female holly bush (that's the one that will have the berries in the winter). Beyond the holly the border widens near the front door. Across the back is a boxwood, rhododendron, and a big clump o...

As the flowers and plants of the perennial border grew in this spring and summer, it became clear that a few things weren't working out the way I had planned. One of the biggest issues was that these echinacea look great, but are doing so well that they are much taller than the wormwood and decorative grass behind them: So I dug out both silvery wormwood plants and moved them. One has a new home here, right at the part of the bed that curves around to the driveway: This nicely fills in a hole left by digging up the incredibly invasive gooseneck loosestrife that was there previously. At the nursery they suggested that this more "cultivated" variety of loosestrife wouldn't take over the bed, but that turned out to be completely wrong. It formed a very dense mat of roots, but hopefully we got enough of it out that we can control any shoots that try to come up between the nice plants. In the spot where the other gooseneck loosestrife was I bought a nice bi...